I will personally not say much about this and simply refer to what Domenico Losurdo said in an interview. In 2016, Losurdo was interviewed to discuss two books written by him, Class Struggle and the Absent Left.

At the end of the interview, Losurdo says, “I see no contradiction between the commitment to ‘the Reconstruction of the Communist Party’ and the wish and encouragement for the recovery of the left in our country (and in the West more generally). Once you get past the binary reading of social conflict, you can understand very well the existence of forces that, while not subscribing in any way to the communist program of overthrowing the capitalist-imperialist order, are fighting for the defense of the welfare state and for a politics of peace. On the contrary, it was authors such as Bobbio who believed that the overthrow of the “socialist camp” in Eastern Europe and the dissolution of communist parties in the West would give impetus to the Western left, finally freed from the lead in its wings. As is well known, the opposite happened. The Absent Left draws attention to this. In this regard, the book specifies that the recovery of the left in the West implies not only the fight against the dismantling of the welfare state, but also against wars whose neo-colonial character and catastrophic consequences are now clear to everyone.”

Link to the interview

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[–] 50 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (6 children)

No. We should fight for the dismantling of the bourgeois state. That is something very different than fighting against the welfare state. Losurdo is right. Fighting for the rights of workers is an integral part of the struggle to build class consciousness and to develop a revolutionary movement.

This does not however mean voting for bourgeois parties just because they promise welfare state concessions. Building an independent socialist political movement that does not subordinate itself to bourgeois liberalism is not mutually exclusive with continuing to advocate for the protection and expansion of worker rights and social welfare.

At any given time we should always push for more than what the most "progressive" bourgeois party is offering. This is what sharpens the contradiction and exposes the bourgeoisie's pretense of progressivism. We have to force the liberals to expose themselves as the ones who are standing in the way of workers' rights and social justice.

How will you, as a revolutionary vanguard, win the trust of the working class otherwise if they do not see you as their strongest and most determined champion in their struggle for economic and social justice? Why would workers trust you if you are actively trying to make their lives worse and take away their hard won rights and social safety nets?

Lenin had quite a lot to say on this subject. If you have not watched it yet, i highly recommend listening to this video on "What Is To Be Done" and its criticism of economisim because it addresses in part exactly these sorts of topics.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

    Why would workers trust you if you are actively trying to make their lives worse and take away their hard won rights and social safety nets?

    I don't know, seems to work just fine for the bourgeois in the Nordics. Write a book about how you think "the welfare state = apartheid" and say that it is your life's mission to dismantle it, and you'll become prime minister with a majority government (Sweden).

    To me it seems the issues of the welfare state stem from de-industrialisation and the ever so common economic crises arising from capitalism. A welfare state cannot function in capitalism unless there is also continuous job creation. It makes no sense that an ever decreasing portion of the working population needs to fund the income of others who want to work but cannot, because the jobs don't exist. The state should handout "welfare" insofar that it guarantees you a right to work. Otherwise it will just spiral as it does now in the Nordics: no jobs --> more people utilizing the social safety net --> more strain on the welfare state --> higher taxes for the workers --> etc.

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  • [–] 3 points 19 hours ago (1 child)

    The State guaranteeing employment is still not enough, because the Keynesian systems post ww2 tried just that and began to creak and break in the 1970s leading to the neoliberal counter-reform faction winning power. The spiralling is just the usual cycles of capitalism throwing chunks of workers on the scrap heap when they fail or need to "cut the fat" to not collapse during crises of overproduction.

    This argument (and I get that you aren't the one actually making it) slips back into economism and the false dichotomy of workers vs welfare users. Many workers aren't stupid enough to fall for it, but the imperial core does have a substantial base of Petit-Bourgeois owners and strata of workers that will happily latch on to it to try and sustain their position. It /should/ be easy to refute but whether or not we have the right conditions to have our ideas take hold is another thing entirely.

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  • [–] 2 points 17 hours ago

    The State guaranteeing employment is still not enough, because the Keynesian systems post ww2 tried just that and began to creak and break in the 1970s leading to the neoliberal counter-reform faction winning power.

    Oh totally, a welfare state cannot function within capitalism long term regardless. I kind of clumsily tried to make the point that it is at least manageable during periods of industrialization and growth, because there are jobs. Obviously under capitalism this will never happen long term.

    It /should/ be easy to refute but whether or not we have the right conditions to have our ideas take hold is another thing entirely.

    Most people think only of the spectrum represented in the parliament. So when they think "communists" or "leftists" they think of whatever succdem party the media is currently calling "far-left", and then nothing else. So we are already set back enormously because they keep making things worse (and moving to the right). In the minds of most people, they have to choose between eroding welfare services + higher taxes vs eroding welfare services + lower taxes, and obviously most are gonna choose the latter.

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  • [–] 32 points 2 days ago

    Why would workers trust you if you are actively trying to make their lives worse and take away their hard won rights and social safety nets?

    I was going to post similar, but you already said it well. Nobody is going to like communists who come across as wanting to make things worse, especially in places with embedded anti-communist sentiment.

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  • [–] [S] 11 points 2 days ago

    This does not however mean voting for bourgeois parties just because they promise welfare state concessions. Building an independent socialist political movement that does not subordinate itself to bourgeois liberalism is not mutually exclusive with continuing to advocate for the protection and expansion of worker rights and social welfare.

    Yeah I understand that. But groups such as the American Communist Party and the Swedish Örebro Party are both pretending to be revolutionary and left-wing, but they also advocate for a conflict between workers and people who happens to be on welfare. My fear is that this crap will mix with a genuine critique of how the welfare system and these benefits are maintained largely through imperialism. So we are witnessing a growing trend here whereby Western workers are told that both “welfarism” and imperialism are bad for them. But this is petty bourgeois consciousness, not proletariat consciousness. These false (read fascist) revolutionary parties will gain momentum as the workers’ cost of living worsen. That’s why I believe all real revolutionaries must explicitly advocate for social benefits and a complete stop to the military industrial complex, and protecting the former and attacking the latter by means of violence.

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